Exercise #2: Your Daily Checklist

Finally, it’s time to work on your first version of your daily checklist! This exercise was so important to my recovery that I’ve been feeling nervous about teaching it to you all. But, because it’s so important, I’m pushing myself through my fear and here we go . . .

It’s one thing to LEARN that we have bad habits of perception and interpretation and incorrect and unhealthy beliefs. It’s quite another to begin CHANGING those habits. This exercise, done with commitment 6 evenings per week, will:

·          Help you grow in self-respect, self-admiration, and self-trust as you live each day in alignment with your Core Values,

·          Give you guidance for all your daily decisions, big and small, to help alleviate anxiety and self-doubt,

·          Help you abandon your bad habits and strengthen new healthy habits in line with your true priorities for your life,

·          Help you take risks and baby steps each day in the direction of your goals and dreams,

·          Enable you to look back on each day with satisfaction and pride at all your small (and sometimes big!) steps forward,

·          Help you achieve balance among your priorities,

·          And, most importantly, provide absolute PROOF that you really ARE the person you most admire, respect, and trust!

THE EXERCISE: Develop Your Daily Checklist (version #1)

Step 1: Take 4 sheets of paper and label each with one of these realms: Personal, Spiritual, Professional, Relationships. You can find background on these here.

Step 2: Get out your list of Core Values from Exercise 1. Write down on each paper the Core Values that support each realm. Feel free to add more CVs, if for example, you didn’t list any CVs for your professional realm. Remember that each realm is important for a balanced life; make sure you take time to address each.

Step 3: If your lists are very long, underline or highlight the 5 or so that are most important to your heart.

Step 4: Next, we will list daily and weekly activities to strengthen your good habits that support your Core Values. Write down your ideal behaviors – what behaviors would you really admire and respect in someone else? Make sure your checklist reflects only what is deeply meaningful to your heart – not what you think SHOULD be meaningful to you. Include a goal in terms of time: do you want to do this activity every day? 4 days per week? 1 day per week? 1 time per month?

Step 5: Be as creative as possible here. Don’t let your head chime in with any negativity like, “This list of activities is too long. I’ll never be able to accomplish these every day” or “my coworkers/family/friends will think I’ve gone nuts.” These lists are to make you feel good about you – not to make others feel good about you. That attitude will keep you sick, I promise.

Let me help . . . (the below are just ideas to get you thinking creatively)

If Family is a Relationship CV of yours, but your current family relationships aren’t good, write down tasks that will at least let you feel proud of yourself for reaching out. It doesn’t matter at all if they don’t respond or even if they respond poorly. You need to do this to honor your heart. And, you need to prove to yourself that you can respect and love yourself completely – regardless of how others react. Some ideas to consider: commit to calling up mom every week; commit to saying something nice to your sibling(s) everyday; commit to giving gratitude to your father once every month for something you learned from him. If you simply can’t connect in person (like me, for example, you’ve been disowned or separated by death), then set a timeline of tasks to be able to COMPLETELY and sincerely forgive a family member who hurt you. You get bonus points for this since Forgiveness is a Spiritual CV, so you’d be killing two birds with one stone!

If having a Career you love is a Professional CV, commit to researching your field(s) of interest for a half hour every day or 3 hours per week (whatever words best with your schedules) to find new ways of making a living in a field you enjoy. Commit to reaching out to someone in that field once a week to see what you can learn from them. Commit to reading a new book about your field(s) of interest every month to learn as much as you can about the field and how you can make it work for you. Commit to developing a timeline to make a transition into the field –even if you begin doing it part time or have to take classes - even if it will take a long time.

If Recovery is a Spiritual CV of yours (it won’t be forever – remember this is just your first checklist), commit to being dedicated to this exercise 6 out of 7 days per week for the next 3 months. Commit to filling out your checklist 6 out of 7 evenings per week. Commit to reading a new inspirational book (not necessarily a recovery book) every month. Commit to reading my blog everyday (I’ve committed to myself to writing a new post 5 days per week, except when I’m on vacation later this week).

If Improving Your Health is a Personal CV of yours (it should be), commit to eating a well balanced diet everyday. Even if you digest just small amounts of each food group and take a vitamin every day, commit to it. A bowl of raisin bran will get you protein, dairy, fruit, and whole grains all in one shot! Commit to getting a small amount of exercise every day, even if it’s just taking the stairs up to your office every morning or taking a long dog walk. If you don’t have a dog, ask to borrow one from a neighbor or volunteer at a shelter. This way you can meet a Personal and a Spiritual goal (Giving of Yourself) at the same time!

If you want feedback, please just email me your list of CVs and your draft Checklist. It’s totally understandable that this could be a difficult exercise without assistance – you still don’t trust yourself to do it in the best way for you! Just make sure to give your email a descriptive title so I don’t mistake it for junk mail! I’d be happy to give you some more ideas and make sure you’re on the right track.

Be very careful not to let any negativity into your work. Everything has to have a positive, self-respecting and self-supportive tone. There should be nothing about weight and body size or shape in your Checklist! You can only include activities around improving nutrition and activity. You cannot, for example, include, “I will lose 1 pound a week” or “I will eat no more junk food.” You know that doesn’t work. Plus, I’m recovered, and I eat junk food almost every day – I just eat it in small quantities. I don’t want to give that up. I enjoy it, and I believe you will, too, someday. No restricting, no setting ridiculous expectations. Do this with love and compassion like you’re doing a checklist to give to your child to help him/her grow in self-respect, self-admiration, self-love (of course, your real child would have very different CVs, but I think you can get what I mean).

Forcibly shut out any negativity, fear or judgment. No, you won’t be able to meet all your goals every day. That would be “perfection,” and our ideals of perfection keep us mired in addiction. Success is meeting 75% of your goals 75% of the time. You should always give yourself a day off every week (be consistent). On that day, put your list away as a gift to yourself or as a holiday, and for that one day, make your decisions around that. My day off quickly became Sundays in the Spring of 2005 when I just read inspirational books, lounged in the pool, napped with my dog, and watched a movie at night. I reveled in all the good work I had done all week.

My updated Checklist is available for you to download here. But, use it only for reference. Your top CVs and mine are bound to be very different. Your Checklist needs to be very unique, reflecting the unique (but beautiful, valuable, needed!) person that you are!

One last point – Exercise 3 is another daily exercise that works together with the Daily Checklist, at the time you're filling it out every evening. I’ll post that tomorrow. For now, just get to work on compiling your Checklist.

Comments

[Leigh]

Thanks for the exercise, Michelle. I started working on my value-based list today. I think I'll be adding more things as I'm able to think of them, but I made a good start so far.

[Heather]

Well done, Michelle -- if you can do this well with a little fear, I can imagine how great you are at things you're confident about! I like this exercise and put a link in my latest post to encourage any of my readers who haven't seen this to come over and do it (along with the others). Awesome!

With love,
Heather

[Michelle Hope]

Hi Heather and Leigh. Thanks for the nice comments!

For all the other readers, Leigh actually did send me her exercises for me to review before I left for vacation. It was great fun for me to get to know Leigh so deeply and to help her get together a really great Daily Checklist centered around her most important Core Values. If anyone else would like my input, please just send your work to me!

Love,
Michelle